4 Most Important SEO Ranking Factors for Real Estate From a 10,000 Foot View

There is a lot that goes into search engine optimization, but in actuality, there’s only really a few things that will move the lever for you. The things that will be important and help you get results. That’s what we’re going to focus on in this post.

We’re trying to give you the action items and the understanding of how it works and what you need to do to actually get results.

Watch the Video or Read the Post Below

From a 10,000-foot Point of View, What’s the Most Important Part of SEO?

First of all, there are four main parts of SEO. This introduction is all about really getting your head around what SEO is, how it works if you really want to learn the craft of SEO.

SEO Ranking Factors for Real Estate #1: URL

First of all, you’ve got what’s called the URL factors. The URL is your domain name. That’s things like how long your domain name has been owned by you. How long the website’s been up online. Those are things that matter. The site structure of the website. Is the website set up correctly with your URL? That’s something we’ve already built into InvestorCarrot. If you have a website outside of InvestorCarrot, that’s something you might be concerned about.

There’s a bunch of other things, like site structure, like I said, domain lifespan, search engine friendly URLs. All of that stuff except for domain lifespan is built into InvestorCarrot to make your life easier. As your website stays online longer, it ages, and Google likes it.

Here’s a screenshot of a website.

Klamathfallsapartments.net. That’s the URL. I have owned that domain for several years, and if I was to go up a different website that Google felt was very similar as far as optimized in content, and my URL was owned for let’s say 10 years, and this one was brand new, I would definitely get a boost and some sort of credit for having a domain that has been owned and up and online longer.

The longer that you own the domain, the more authority that Google will feel that your website potentially has.

That’s one factor to always keep in your mind. That if you just purchased a domain, and you’re just attaching it to a new website, you’re going up against other websites that have been around for longer. We can definitely accelerate the process of ranking well using what we’re going to teach you, but some part of the equation may be that your domain might just need to age a little bit to get that ranking up.

Be patient with some of the things. Make sure that you recognize that if you’re not seeing your ranking crack through and you’re doing everything else right, and your website is new, it may be domain age is part of it.

You want to keep a nice, simple URL structure. That’s a good thing. Complicated is a bad thing. This is the way that we have it built out in our InvestorCarrot websites already, so if you’re a member, you don’t have to worry about this. If you’re not a member, if you have another website platform or you built one yourself, this is something you’re going to want to pay attention to.

A simple URL structure will be something like:

yoursite.com/sell-my-atlanta-house, or

yoursite.com/how-it-works.

On the flip side, something that’s complicated that Google doesn’t like is too many forward slashes in your URL:

your-site.com/sell/sellingyourhouse/boston

That’s just not a very friendly URL.

Google doesn’t like that as much. Or having weird characters in your URL:

yoursite.com/?p25235

Google can’t determine what that’s about. In InvestorCarrot, we’ve already made it simple for you. You don’t have to do anything at all to make your URL simple.

SEO Ranking Factors for Real Estate #2: On-Page SEO for Real Estate

The second thing is on-page. On-page SEO are things on your website that you can physically see on the page. Content, pictures, things like that, and how they’re structured. In on-page, really, for your website, it’s kind of like soil for a farmer. On-page for SEO is like soil for the farmer. If you don’t have good soil and you’re planting a crop, there’s no way that that crop is going to grow very good. On the flip side, if you don’t have the on-page optimization done on your website for SEO, it’s going to be very, very hard to rank well for any keyword phrases, no matter what you’re doing on the back end. The on-page is where it starts. It’s the fertile soil to grow a great crop.

If you don’t have fertile soil with the right nutrients and minerals, you can’t grow a good crop.

Make sure that the on-page optimization is correct. With InvestorCarrot members, once again, we give you a jump start. The content that’s already built into your website is already optimized very, very well. We suggest you go in there and tweak it, customize it to yourself, and use the SEO tool built into our system on each page to ensure it retains its SEO grade for the keyword you’re going after.

Part of on-page is content relevance. Let’s say someone is looking for a rent to own home in Birmingham, and your website doesn’t say those words anywhere on your website, but that’s what you’re looking for. How is Google going to know that your content is relevant to that search phrase?

You need to make sure that your content talks about the same things that you’re trying to optimize and rank well for.

Is it high-quality content, or are you just throwing up a few words here and there and moving on? You need to make sure that you have high-quality content on there … It’s robust content. It’s good. It’s valuable and also addresses the keywords and the things that your person, whether they’re a tenant, buyer, or seller, is typing in. Be sure to have very relevant keywords for search phrases that you know your prospects are typing in in your market. We just suggest you dive in and tweak it up to make it more relevant to you, more relevant to your business model, to you as a person. And, build some credibility in there.

Also, to help make it more relevant in Google’s eyes, we’ve got the Carrot SEO tool. With the Carrot SEO tool, you can tell the platform and you can tell Google what to look at.

With this, if you’ve identified that you want to rank for rent to own homes in Birmingham, AL, you put it in the focus keyword section. You make sure that keyword phrase is in the SEO title, as you can see it is, and you make sure it’s in the description down there below. What that does, that keys Google into the fact that that’s what that web page is about. It makes it very relevant in Google’s eyes that that web page is likely about rent to own homes in Birmingham, Alabama. This is a huge factor. We make it easier for you with Investor Carrot, and we also give you the SEO tool to make sure that you’re following along. Whether you’re an SEO expert or not, you’re going to be able to optimize your pages very well with our built-in SEO tool.

Then next, with the SEO tool, are your keywords used right? Your pages should really have a good mix of your keyword phrases and pictures and structure so Google has the information they need to know your site is very relevant. That’s what we’re talking about here, guys. This isn’t rocket science. What we’re looking for is we just want to make sure that the content on the page is relevant to the search phrase that we’re trying to rank for. If we’re trying to rank for note sellers in California or note buyers in California, we want to make sure that the content on that page talks about your note buying service in California, and it has some pictures about that, and your title tag in our SEO tool and your description has those keywords in it. Very, very relevant. Use our SEO tool to help guide you along to make sure you’re staying relevant.

Then like I said, the website structure. Is the website structured right? This is something you don’t have to worry about. If you did not have Investor Carrot, you would have to worry about this, but we worry about how fast your website loads. We worry about all the things behind the scenes in the code. You do not have to touch it. That alone should make you rest easy at night knowing that you never have to touch this or reach out to a web person and have them do it. Get the on-page parts right, and it makes it much easier to grow a great crop. Bad on-page equals a thin crop. We all want to eat well. We all want to have a great crop.

So now off-page SEO. Off-page basically is everything … It’s kind of obvious, but everything that is away from your pages. What we’re talking about here is off-page stuff that’s kind of like water and the fertilizer for a farmer. You’ve got this soil. You’re hoping to plant something. Now you’ve got to take something that’s outside of that environment of the soil and put it on the soil to help it grow the seed. It takes that fertile soil, and it adds the extra boost that it needs to grow. Without watering, without fertilizing a crop, it’s going to be really hard to make it grow well.

One way that you can water and fertilize your website is with backlinks. Backlinks are basically where one website has a link on their website that’s clickable that goes over to your website. Google looks at it as a vote of confidence that your website is a good website according to that one. When other quality websites link to your website, Google really likes that.

Also, your footprint matters. What I mean by footprint is if you just have a website up there, and you’re really looking to dominate in your market, if you only have your website up there and that’s all you’re doing, Google doesn’t really have a whole lot to go off of to see if you’re a legitimate company. One thing that they look at is your footprint. Do you have other entities, other websites or other social media profiles online, that also link to your website, that also has your company name in it? They also have your address in it, your phone number in it? So set up a Google Business profile. Go to YouTube and set up a YouTube profile and get a few videos in there. Go set up some business directories or citations, which we’re going to teach you how to do citations in a later module. Make sure you’re not just using a website only. Go out there and make sure your footprint is wider and you have your business listed and profiles claimed on other websites.

SEO Ranking Factors for Real Estate #4: Social Media

The fourth part is social factors. You can see here is a screenshot of the bottom of a website where it’s got Google My Business, Facebook likes, and things like that. Google is really looking at the social factors of your website. They look at that as votes kind of. They figure, well, if someone was on this website and they clicked the Facebook like button or engage with your Google Business content that must be a good thing. That must be a vote that that person likes the website. We’re going to say that if a website has consistent and good “votes”, then it must be high quality and relevant. They’re going to reward you with a higher search result out of that.

Growing Your SEO

Those are the four main parts, guys. You’ve got the URL factors, which is really the ground. That’s the ground. You’ve got the on-page stuff, which is really the soil. That’s the soil. You’ve got the … The off-page stuff is your water. That’s your fertilizer. Then the social stuff is just kind of good juju. That’s just good stuff, good mojo, to help with everything else.

Next, what we’re going to dive into on the next video is the timeline to expect search engine rankings, to expect results and how to effectively guess what you can expect as far as how long it’s going to take to get results in your market, so let’s see you in the next video.

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About the Author – Brendan Holmes

Brendan Holmes is a PPC and SEO junkie who loves experimenting with various Internet marketing techniques. He is a Google Partners & Bing Ads certified professional with experience in internet lead generation, advertising sales, and revenue growth.